There exists a need to find a solution to the stability of a cultural
identity and its record in the face of a dynamic nature of reality
changes. An art building mythologies can play an important part
here, but it must fulfill certain conditions.
The importance of art results among others from the fact that
it uses signs and is able to revalue or verify this very system.
It can also include certain realities into a meaningful system,
and, thereby, form new points of view and perspectives,
narrations and mythologies. The considerations presented
in the article referred to the 2012 Berlin Art Biennale.
Today’s world, and globalization processes taking place
therein, cause the pressure of the problem of subjectivity.
A reflective nature of art can be an undesired burden when
creating a consumer society. What is vital for artists is a deepened
awareness of time in which one lives and mechanisms he/
she is governed by. The very issue is complex because our reality
is not homogeneous. Art means different things in different
environments.
An art recording today’s world, showing unknown spaces or
even those marginal and excluded one is necessary for building
a culture continuity. What is necessary is also the one that
contributes to the cultural continuation and touches upon
developmental issues here, as well as creates and records their
narrations or even mythologies. It is vital that we refer to
common values here.
The 2012 Berlin Art Biennale showed very strong tendencies
in order to make art a forum for changes of our current reality.
What was proposed is a model in which an art should not
fabricate a work of art, but make open situations with unknown
conclusions possible. It is a misleading situation because it lacks
fixed elements guaranteed by an artistic object irrespective of its
surrounding. These experiences are referred to the postindustrial
area suffering from a deep sociological and cultural transformation.
Dynamism and lack of stability characterizing it rather
imply the need to search for stable points rather than call for
transformations. Transferring experiences of Biennale in an uncritical way here would be nonsensical. If an art is to be
treated as a reason for a common good, it should derive from the
area or place where it is created. Native values have been
appreciated in Poland and references to national myths were
made. A current situation gives the floor to the myths forgotten
a long time ago, such as a myth of the Galicia or the area of the
former Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, as well as a cultural myth
of Central Europe. Building mythology can be a cure for
deconstruction. The answer to a total change of identity can be
its protection by means of deposing information building
mythology in a materialized artistic object. The myth constitutes
a primary form of explaining things and the world at the level of
the feeling. The idea of building mythology is based on several
assumptions. The first one is the need of stability, the second the
need of defining values to which art being currently made could
refer to, and, the third one the need of formulating the meanings
and associations of things again. An industrial mythology is
absent or very slightly noticeable in the Polish culture. Thus,
it is worth investigating it, taking into account the fact that the
era it concerns goes into the past for ever. There are the first
symptoms of dealing with this problem in art. The change,
the organisers of the Berlin Biennale call for can take place after
the elements of a cultural identity and subjectivity are protected
by means of being saved. They can be a value added to the
general output.